Something is still fishy about Mr. Johnson's explanation. As I posted earlier, the 20% discount edge disappears fairly quickly, after a relative low number of hands. Now Johnson said he wasn't required to play any minimum hands, whatever. Your quoted link said a higher number like 500 hands, but the point is that eventually the player's edge disappears. Johnson played at once a 12 hours session, it is fairly likely to say that he played 500 or more hands in 12 hours. The bottomline again, that his discount edge was gone long time before the 12 hours were up, so him contributing this edge to his success is BS. Also, it is hard to believe that 3 different casinos would give the same, but unprofitable (for them) edge for him. I assume casinos know the math better than the players, if not, they don't belong in the gambling business. It is possible that there was more to his agreement with the casinos, but again 3 casinos making the same math mistake is a very low probability event... Also, this reasoning is illogical: ""You'd never lose the million," he said. "If you got to minus-five hands (an overall loss of $500,000) ... you would stop and take your 20 percent discount. You'd only owe them $400,000." But nothing prevents him to lose again 5 times in a row (-400 K) and again, so he still could lose 1 million, just not in 1 session, but at least 3.
Wow...pekelo is thicker than I thought... Let me offer you a similar (almost the same) game: We play head or tails with a coin for $500K a toss. If I win you pay me $500K. If you win I pay you $400K... I wish there was a game like that in the market...